Midlands Class IV, Spring 2011

Midlands Class IV, Columbia, SC

Con-Nection team members aimed to address the issue of reintegration for ex-convicts into the community in the Central Savannah Region Area. After the recent closing of the Aiken Community Outreach Ministry, many of these citizens stopped receiving help from the community and as such, struggled to gain employment and to meet basic living needs. The Con-Nection team members interviewed ex-convicts who were willing to share their struggles with the media.

Teach for America, a national non-profit organization that places new teachers in low-performing schools, will make its first entry into South Carolina during the 2011-12 school year. The program will bring thirty bright, young teachers for two-year teaching tenures in Florence, Orangeburg, Darlington and Clarendon Counties. The TFA team project focuses on helping welcome these new teachers from all across the US and making them quickly become comfortable in South Carolina.

The team members of All-In worked with the Greater Columbia Community Relations Council (GCCRC), which promotes positive relationships within the community, equal opportunity and fairness for all members of the community and awareness and appreciation of cultural diversity. The GCCRC has existed for over 50 years in Columbia, but a recent survey taken showed that the community at large is not aware of the GCCRC or its significant contribution to the community.

The REAP team mission is based on a program called “Books Beyond” that was established at the Rhode Island Department of Corrections. The program aims to strengthen the bond between children and their incarcerated parents through books. The REAP program is carried out in three simple steps: first, volunteers work with inmates to choose collected, donated, or purchased books that they would like to share with their children. Second, those books are then read and recorded onto a recording device.

The START team targeted a serious but not fully appreciated problem affecting young readers: summer reading loss. Studies have shown that children lose between 9 and 12 weeks of reading skills during the summer break. For below-average readers, the cumulative loss has a critically adverse impact on a child’s reading development.